Katipunan

WHAT IS A FILIPINO ?
By: Bayani B. Elma, M.D.

It has often been told that if you send an Englishman, a Spaniard
and an American to a deserted island, the Englishman will form a club, the
Spaniard will build a church and the American will start a newspaper. What
do you think a Filipino would do if you join him into that mix ?

I am almost sure that the answers to that rhetorical question would be
as varied as the background of the individuals responding to that query.
There would be historical or anthropological, socio-political and postmodern
i.e. DNA bases, responses to the question. Let us take these answers one by one.

HISTORICAL/ANTHROPOLOGICAL: The oldest human inhabitant of the
Philippines was the so-called Tabon Man, found in the Tabon caves of Palawan,
who was said to have lived there 22,000 years ago. He was of the Proto-Malay
stock who emigrated to the Philippines from mainland Asia when the land bridges
existed. However, the recognized aborigines of the Philippines were the
so-called Negritos whose descendants were the Aetas who came also by way of
the land bridges 12,000 B.C. Then came the Indonesians, tall, brown and
slender about 3,000 B.C. where the Ifugaos, Mangyans, Manobos, Bagobos,
Tirurays and other pagan tribes in Mindanao descended from. Then came the
Malays, the Muslims, the Chinese, Indians, Spaniards ( Ferdinand Magellan,
a Portuguese named the country " Filipinas" in honor of King Philip II of
Spain in 1521 ), the British in 1763 and finally the Americans who came in
1896 when the Philippines was ceded to the United States by the Treaty of
Paris. What this means is that since a Filipino is a mixture of different
races and cultures, he can be religious, entrepreneurial, pioneering,
fun-loving or isolationist and anti-establishment.

SOCIO-POLITICAL. During the pre-Hispanic times, under the tribal
chieftain, i.e. Rajah Lankandula, re-inforced under Spanish era, certain
principles and values formed our national traditions as a social class of
people. Pakikisama: the willingness to share with one another the burdens
as well as the rewards of living together. Pagkakaisa: the building up of
an articulated national community through forms of social organization
understood, accepted, and undertaken by the people themselves.
Pakikipagkapwa-tao: human solidarity, understood as a dedication to the
development of one's own nation, so as to enable it to participate on free and
equal terms in the total development of mankind. On the opposite side of the
ledger is the ugly part of the Filipino, as politicians. These are special breeds of
Filipinos who are corrupt to the core, who care most what's best for them
but not for the hoi polloi and the country and who play hoity-toity with
the electorate to gain positions of power. These two illustrations are
the imponderable unity, uniqueness and diversity of the Filipino character.

POSTMODERN. This begs the question: is it nature or nurture? Expats or
Filipinos outside of the Philippines work and excel in their chosen
specialties and disciplines - and their children are part of that nebulous
model minority myth - but when they come back to the Philippines to change
the "system", they fail miserably and instead get " eaten " by the
"system." Is there something in the air, water, chemicals or whatever in the
Philippines that do this ? I am very sure that his DNA is still a double
helix structure of protein compounds completely preserved.

So, if a Filipino joins the Englishman, the Spaniard and the American in
that deserted island, what would he do. I will wait for your answer.